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The Turner Thesis in the Modern United States

Despite being written over one hundred years ago, Frederick Jackson Turner’s Frontier Thesis is still valid to this very day. The main point of Turner’s Frontier Thesis is that people migrate to places of cheap land and economic opportunity. Traditionally, the cheap land was located along the Frontier where there was an abundance of resources. As the people moved westward in search of cheap resources, more settlements developed in the West. While the Frontier is no longer present in today’s America, one simply has to reinterpret Turner’s Thesis as economic opportunities and migration towards them. Because of this, Turner’s interpretation of the West is a place of opportunity and hope – not conquest as many contemporary historians would have the world believe.
Despite recent opposition, Turner’s Frontier Thesis is still relevant – not just in the West. The Frontier Thesis states that people migrate toward cheap land and places of economic opportunity. This is closely related to the boom/bust cycles that have become prevalent in the West. One such example is the Silicon Valley. At Silicon Valley, jobs based on technology are plentiful but land prices have skyrocketed. As a result, businesses have begun to relocate their offices. One such business is Intel. It has begun to manufacture chips in surrounding states. Because of this, workers are relocating in order to secure a job as well as obtain better prices on homes. Consequently, surrounding states such as Arizona, Oregon, and Nevada have received an increase in technology related job growth which, in turn, causes an increase in migration. This cycle demonstrates that Turner’s Thesis is still applicable to today’s society.
While so...

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...ating to where the jobs are located. Because of this, surrounding states have experienced an increase in population – just as it happened in the history of the West.
It is important for historians to realize that the development of the West was/ and is a process. This process occurred due to human interaction with the environment as it slowly became civilized. This process was important not only for the resources but for the rejuvenation of the United States – it renewed democracy and the economy. While some contemporary historians would like to see the West classified as a region, it makes more sense for it to be classified as a process. The West is still developing as it shifts away from the physical frontier to the technology-based frontier. The Frontier is still alive and changing and the people are following it – just as the settlers did in the American West.

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